Cantwell is a member of the Senate Finance Committee. A bipartisan group of six committee members – not including Cantwell – is trying to hammer out a health care compromise. President Obama met with the group earlier this week.

Liberal senators are notably absent from the negotiating team, set up by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Work backstage in Washington, D.C., is that the group may jettison the “public option” from health care reform.

All of which leaves Cantwell on the hot seat as she returns to a state chilling out from its recent heat wave.

Cantwell was invited onto the tax-writing Finance Committee by Baucus, D-Montana, after the 2006 election. She is the first Washington senator to serve on the panel in more than half a century. She serves on two other front-rank committees, a three-fer unusual for the Senate.

At the same time, unions and Democratic groups back in this Washington are pressing for a public health care plan to compete with insurance companies.

Cantwell released her “public schedule” late Friday for her first week back in the state.

It contains an inspection of Hanford with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. The senator is helping dedicate a cargo terminal at the Port of Vancouver. She is co-hosting a forum on the Colville National Forest with Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rogers, R-Wash., who recently gave comfort to the Birther movement.

As well, Cantwell will sit down in Longview to hear a report from the Mount St. Helens Advisory Committee. The senator will also attend a barbecue with local citizens in Newport.